Russian defence against drone swarms

Very expensive gun and such a cheap simple sight...

That sight base would be interesting for a dedicated air defence sight with laser rangefinding and thermal imaging and a ballistics computer to calculate lead and project aim points to hit moving targets...

Having said that... it would be very dangerous to be near if he just opens up on any drone he sees... a hail of rifle calibre machine gun bullets spraying around following a moving target means somewhere it is going to be raining lead and mild steel...

I would say such a weapon would be good against water surface drones from the doors of helicopters like the Hind or Helix as you are firing down into the water.

Might not have the penetration to destroy a surface drone if it has armour so perhaps jump up to the 12.7mm calibre model from the Hind.

This will quickly run out of ammo in seconds unfortunately.

The main uses for gatling guns is for fast moving evasive targets... whether you are on the ground and the target is in the air or you are in the air and are the fast moving thing and the target is on the ground.

The enormous rate of fire means even a very short burst of fire puts a large dense amount of projectiles in the air about and around the point of aim.

Effectively turning a machine gun into a shotgun.

When you see it on TV they tend to use long bursts and hose down stationary targets, but I would say in this case they would use short bursts aimed at the target relying on the rate of fire to result in impacts on and around the target.

This means if the target moves between when you fire and when your rounds arrive you are still going to get some hits.

Footage above of Hinds using their twin barrel 23mm nose mounted cannon against naval drones show they fire in very short bursts that land all around the target.

In the case of this rifle calibre machine gun gatling I would say they would also use very short bursts to introduce lead all around where the target is so no matter what the target does it is going to get some hits.

This means it wont need an enormous amount of rounds but it will massively improve hit probability.

Here is a video showing a PKM being used against a rather large drone and you can see how long it takes to get hits to bring it down... bursts of low rate of fire rounds makes it harder to get hits...

So far the solution against swarming drone or very small drone in general seems to head to autocannon firing airburst shell, Lasers or HPM.

Over very short range the weapon of choice would be a shotgun, but its lack of effective range limits its performance in many cases... especially high flying drones... but that new ammo the Russians developed with the kevlar net extend its effective range and make it useful.

Air burst ammo essentially is the equivalent of a thermobaric warhead compared with a flame thrower. It extends the effective range by deploying the pellets/flame only as it approaches the target so it isn't wasted and used up on the way.

Unfortunately I have no idea how much ammo this thing carries but I'm pretty sure the feed goes beyond this picture...

Being a jeep I am sure they could carry thousands of rounds if they wanted and for persistence against drones thousands of rounds would be useful.

Well you should think how thristy the gun is. that GsHG 7.62 have 9000 RPM fire rate, means every seconds it spits 150 rounds.

GShG-7.62 is 6,000rpm and 3,000rpm on a lower rate setting AFAIK. The GSh-23-6 fires at 10-12k RPM.

The point is that in very short bursts the high rate of fire of 100 rounds per second acts more like a shotgun burst than a string of shots like a PKM would achieve.

But for swarm drones which often smol, you kinda need to hit it and hit as many of them as possible.

For swarm drones airburst cannon shells in the 23mm or 30mm or even 57mm calibre range would make sense... especially if every other round has an EMP warhead with an effective range of a few hundred metres or so, but against drones shotguns... or weapons that act like shotguns would be rather effective... and affordable.

And a devastating anti ambush weapon if you are driving around supporting supply line troops or special forces troops.

The machine gun has a hybrid drive - both electrical and mechanical. Maybe the ROF can be adjusted?

I was under the impression it was gas powered but have seen videos of it being dry fired (ie barrels spinning, without rounds being fired.... and spinning at two different spin rates, which suggests electric drive).

Every solution adds to the over all solution to the problem and many of these solutions are multi use too which makes them even more useful.

Here is the video... at about 24 seconds he starts firing by spinning up the barrels and he fires a bit at the low rate and then increases to top firing rate...



You can see later on when he fires at the lower rate the mount is steady, but when he boosts the speed to the high rate of fire the whole mount moves... and it looks like a fairly solid mount...

A new 12.7 shotgun round, with a cartridge containing a kevlar made net binded with slugs. It makes a 1+m diameter, effective up to 100m.

They are 12 gauge, not 50 cal.. .

12 gauge make them about 18.5mm.

The huge advantage of these shells is that with a normal buckshot round the projectiles keep spreading so beyond about 30-40m they are too far apart to hit the target.

By tying the projectiles together they don't keep spreading which means not only do the projectiles hit the target, if they miss there is kevlar between them so for instance two buckshot projectiles go either side of the propeller on a drone with a normal round they missed, but with this round they are dragging a kevlar line that could sever or tangle the propeller and bring the drone down.

Having the buckshot projectiles tied together means they wont keep spreading and continue in a group that is linked together by strands of kevlar like a cheese grater to cut or tangle up anything it hits.

Buckshot comes in different sizes and weights and some of it is as heavy as 9mm pistol bullets and should be effective to similar ranges but because of the spread it becomes useless at ranges 9mm remains effective to.

A spread of 1m would be ideal because it means you can be off by 1m in aim and still get hits.

This round massively increases the effective range of a shotgun or weapon that can fire shotgun rounds.

They have large calibre anti riot weapons they could load with larger variations of this round that could be useful too. 50mm weapons for launching gas grenades etc could be loaded up with lots of kevlar and lead weights... in fact with rifling and the right design you could have the weights spread out in flight for maximum effect.

The slow mo footage of that round on the shotgun round video show it looks more like the net is a bit gathered up as it moves through the air rather than spread out... but it would still be effective by keeping the projectiles together and not allowing them to spread out too far in flight to the target area.

Ah, right. This 12/70 puzzled me.
This kevlar wire works as a cutter and gets into a propeller blocking it.

When you posted the video I assumed it was a typo so I used a smiley face.

Even at extended ranges where the shot and the kevlar have slowed down to no longer being a cheese cutter it would act like a net and tangle and be gathered up by a spinning propeller and stop it spinning too.

Very clever... but you would need practise at different ranges because you would need to learn the trajectory it takes to work out how high to aim at different ranges so it doesn't drop underneath the target.

A single shot model, say with an underbarrel shot like the 40mm grenade launcher attachment would be good for last second defence as it gets close to you, but should also be good lying in a trench with these things 200m up dropping grenades on you because firing almost vertically then bullet drop does not effect where to aim if it is practically above you.

A semi auto box or drum fed shotgun would be rather potent too.

Buckshots are only effective at short distances and as a last-ditch weapon.

Agree, but if you look at the video posted above by Alamo showing new shotgun rounds with kevlar strands linking the buckshot together would extend the effective range considerably without making them expensive.

There are many factors to consider when dealing with swarms of drones, such as their size and configuration during flight or attack.

I think the key factor here is that we really have not seen the use of swarms of drones really... to qualify as a swarm you would need hundreds or thousands of drones at a time and the side closest to that seems to be the Russians and that means you need AI control with auto target detection and identification to manage the attack.

We see a few videos of attacks but what we don't see is the thousands of drones that just lose signal and drop from the sky as they approach the target because the target has a jamming system.

The solution to drone swarms is going to include anti drone weapons, but also jammers, and other EW systems... it will also including blinding drones, and hiding targets so they can't find what they want to hit, and it will also include anti drone weapons like shotguns and rifles with scopes to allow drones to be hit day and night and in bad weather, but also light missiles for the bigger drones.

If you look in the video I posted above the Orcs use a large agricultural drone they call Baba Yaga which is quite big and can carry a load of 82mm mortar bombs which t it can fly over enemy troops and drop on them. At about 4kgs each you can imagine this is a large drone and at a distance it is not easy to shoot down and in the video a PK is used for the job... but really something like a Kornet would work better. That new Bulat ATGM which is a half sized missile based on the Kornet design would be even better still because it does not need a huge HE warhead to do the job and the Bulat is smaller and lighter and probably cheaper but is laser beam riding and probably quite fast and probably has a decent range. (it is intended for hitting light targets like BMPs and BTRs where the full sized Kornet is a bit of a waste in terms of penetration... and size.

And of course already in this thread we have seen TOR missiles with EMP warheads that would be the obvious and ideal way to take down a drone swarm with one or two missiles launched into their midst.

The Russians are working on a broad range of systems and equipment and of course they have to make sure it all works together and that it overlaps and does not leave gaps for specific types of drones to sneak in and take everything out... and of course they will be working on their own drone swarm technology too.

Fighter drones? either with explosives (kamikaze mode) or something to shoot down the other drone? MW/ laser guns?

All of the above and more... perhaps a drone with a propeller made of steel or a wing leading edge made of reinforced material so it can simple ram drone targets and break them... flying through the targets and shredding them means you can kill quite a few enemy drones before you lose your own drone... some sort of rear mounted shrouded propeller to protect it from damage so you can ram multiple drones without losing power yourself... and the added advantage is that you can be high speed so you can cover a lot of territory and the targets might not even know what hit them... so they wont know how to stop you...

Remember the Russians already have laser based systems in the Ukraine being tested against enemy drones... pretty sure they wont be telling us too much about that...

The idea is not exactly new, but it is definitely an inventive application.

Very true, was used to bring down rigging on sail ships and increase the damage being caused. There was also bar shot that was connected by a solid bar, or duplex or triplex rounds with separate projectiles in one shell case like the duplex round in 12.7x108mm calibre for the nose mounted four barrel gatling gun of the Hind.

There is also flechette rounds which are used as an anti personnel round.

But kevlar strands would be low weight and low drag and would be rather more effective and efficient than a chain in such a small calibre.

Full auto shotguns are not a great idea and having a stabilised full auto shotgun that keeps hitting the target in the same place is not as amazing as it sounds.

Shotguns improve hit probability by launch large numbers of projectiles in each shot all hitting around the point of aim.

Firing multiple shots becomes redundant for the purposes of hit probability but in cases when your first round does not stop the target... say they have body armour... then hitting them again in the same place is not that useful.

A shotgun jumping around as you fire it spreads the damage making a hit in a weak spot more likely and it is that weak spot that is important.

In comparison shooting at drones emptying a 25 round drum in the general direction of the first drone leaves you horribly vulnerable to a second drone if there is one... equally shotgun ammo is bulky and is not that easy to carry in large volumes, so you don't want to have to ship enormous amounts around the front line for trigger happy nutters... it makes more sense to fire a shot and observe to see if you got a hit and adjust and fire a follow up shot.

Even with a machine gun you don't just keep hosing... you fire a burst and observe whether it gets close and adjust your tracking and fire another burst getting closer and closer each time hopefully.

If you think of each shot of a shotgun with buckshot as a burst of 10-15 rounds of 9mm rounds, two shots at a drone will empty most SMGs, yet with a shotgun you are looking at magazine sizes of 7 to 10 rounds with box mags. 5-9 rounds with a pump action with a tube mag.

Have you even seen the videos

Did you read what I said... full auto shotguns are a waste of time and a serious waste of ammo, the whole idea of using a shotgun is to spread the hits around so you don't miss.

The only reason to use a shotgun that can put all its rounds through the same hole on a target is ego... body armour will stop buckshot and a second and third and fourth shot into body armour will not penetrate the armour either.

If you think getting hit by buckshot will throw the target across the floor like in a hollywood movie then ask yourself why firing a buckshot load from a shotgun doesn't throw the guy firing the buckshot backwards across the room too.

Bullets don't make people fly into the air... generally a bullet punches straight through the target and they drop to the ground.

In the case of body armour getting hit with assault rifle rounds often they don't even know they have been hit till afterwards when they check their vests.

Buckshot is powerful and effective against soft targets... it is the equivalent of a 8-10 round random burst of low power 9mm rounds, which most of the time would be lethal just because of the amount of bleeding from that many wounds, but if you have body armour then it will be stopped.

You can't punch through body armour by hitting it repeatedly with full auto fire... just the same as you can't shoot through a tank with a rifle calibre machine gun if you just keep shooting in one spot.

It is clearly shown that the AA-12 does not "jump around" when shot.

That is right... it doesn't, but there is little value in a full auto shotgun for use against drones... it wastes ammo and it makes more sense to shoot and observe and then shoot and observe to see what each shot is doing so you can correct your aim. With a full auto burst I doubt he can even see the target properly let alone where his projectiles are going so if he is missing he wont know and can't correct his aim to get hits on target.... and you don't need 25 hits on target... most of the time one solid hit will do.

In case of the Saiga you can shoot it both as automatic and semi-automatic.

Yeah, but why would you?

Maybe in a trench with enemy then firing a burst of 3-4 rounds might make sense, but emptying the drum mag every time you shoot is stupid hollywood bullshit with no practical use.

Even belt fed machine guns are fired in bursts to walk up to a target.

Read about it months ago, even Russian soldiers fighting on the front-line say that shot-guns with the appropriate type of ammunition are the best weapon to fight against the smaller drones.

I agree that shotguns are a good idea against drones over short distances, and the new Russian rounds with kevlar strings between buckshot projectiles would massively increase the effective range of the shotguns that use it to make them effective over quite decent distances or 100m or so... But...

Full auto shotguns are fucking stupid and a total waste of time and money and ammo.

Remotely controlled installation with 3 NSVT machine guns.

There appear to be four ammo boxes... (and nice big ammo boxes too... not like the normal 50 round boxes used on tank turrets...)

The platform looks a lot like the platform for the ZU-23-2, which I suggested a while back... when set up it allows 360 degree fire and can elevate to 90 degrees vertical fire... and if it can take the recoil of a 23 x 152mm high velocity anti aircraft round then it could be used for mounts of all calibre weapons from rifle calibre through HMG and 14.5mm and of course 23mm as well as 30mm and 40mm grenade launcher calibres and perhaps even the new 57mm grenade launcher calibre.

With smaller calibres there would be more room for ammo and the platform itself would offer excellent mobility in transit and ability to aim all over the place when in position.

Making it robotic would be the icing on the cake.

Such shot-guns shells already exist, the are known as the bolo shells.

Using kevlar strands to link the projectiles makes it more effective against light drones by filling the gaps between the projectiles and stopping the projectiles spreading too far apart and missing the target.

Here is a video showing the problems of shotguns against targets at range.



At 35m you get good hits with even pattern spreads of projectiles, but at 65m it is a question of where does the load hit on the target... or more precisely where do you aim above the target drone to land the payload around where the target is...

Firing lots of rounds for luck does not cut it when you can't tell where your shots fired are going.

Maybe a UV torch to make the kevlar or fishing line glow to act like a sort of tracer at night might help?